Opinion
Editorial

The New Atheists and their God(less) delusion

Historians will one day record the phenomenon of the atheists' onslaught that has marked the first decade of this 21st century and continues today. While actually not much more than a handful in number their prestige, their learning, the shock of their message, and their skill as communicators has taken them to the top of the bestseller lists both in North America and throughout the western world.

Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, ( The God Delusion), author and neuroscience grad Sam Harris ( The End of Faith), and noted journalist Christopher Hitchens ( God is Not Great) lead the pack.

These evangelists for the new yet very old gospel of there-is-no- godism have launched an attack upon belief in God that has been sudden, savage, and beguilingly eloquent. Their take-no- prisoners approach has proven to be popular and extremely persuasive for many. They and their fellow propagandists for a godless future can be said to have a creed of their own. It reads: " People with brains have no religion. People with religion have no brains." This of course is where a certain element of deception slips in.

The truth is that some of humanity's brightest intellects from Pythagoras, Plato and St. Augustine to the Oxford philosopher Anthony Flew (once described as the "arch-priest of atheists") and C.S. Lewis all were former unbelievers who discovered and expounded a living, rational faith. Geneticist Francis Collins, who successfully headed the human genome project and is now director of the American National Institute of Health, converted to Christianity at age 27 while in the midst of his studies. He has debated several times with Dawkins and says the skeptic had to admit to him that the "fine tuning" of the universe following the Big Bang is " very difficult" for atheists to explain away.

One can heartily applaud the atheists for their vivid underlining of religion's only too obvious failings, absurdities and outrages even though, as Peter Harrison, Oxford University's newly appointed Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion, pointed out just the other day: "Yes, Professor Dawkins. Religion can go horribly wrong. But we didn't need a dogmatic diatribe from you to tell us that!"

The truth can't be stated too often that in this life it is the perversion of what is best that always becomes the worst -corruptio optimi pessima, as the Latin proverb says. This is true for religious faith as it is for the gift of individual freedom. That's why one of the strongest and most biting critiques of bad religion is to be found in the pages of the Bible itself. Hypocrisy, priestly immorality and all forms of oppression and injustice are flayed by the Old Testament prophets and by Jesus himself.

In my own student days at Oriel College, Oxford, my philosophy tutor for three years was an outspoken atheist, Richard Robinson. Knowing I was headed for the Anglican ministry he frequently challenged my beliefs. That is partly why I know from experience that Dawkins and company today are slinging stale mud, however fervently they exhibit the zeal of fundamentalist preachers in the media. If their onslaught awakens all the major faiths to a fresh awareness of past and present sins of both omission and commission it will prove to have been a salutary tonic. But, it will have done nothing to help the many millions today who are dimly aware that there is a richer, more meaningful path to life if only somehow they could find it.

The saying of Augustine is still true: "Lord, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." In other words, we are beings with a spiritual nature that will not ultimately be satisfied with consumerism, celebrity or any of the other baubles our culture holds out before our eyes. There is today a well-nigh universal yearning for true belonging, meaning, purpose and a sense of a future destiny that organized religion may well not be meeting. But that should not be mistaken as corroboration that the atheists' dogma of no-godism is correct.

The people whom Dawkins slightingly refers to as "faith heads," i.e. believers -- at any rate those whom I know and admire most -- don't fit the straw man caricatures he or his fellow atheists hold up for rebuke or mockery. They are men and women of thought and action who have caught a glimpse of the transcendent mystery behind and through and in all things. The One they lovingly and gratefully call God.

Tom Harpur's latest book is Born Again -- My journey from fundamentalism to freedom.